I did end up bumping it to 20C or about 68F after maybe 60-72 hours and it did end up developing a krausen, although not anywhere near as big as the WLP090 strain. Going to give it another week or so before moving it to somewhere warmish and stable and forgetting about it.

Fermentation related...

A little while back I vacationed in Key West, and found myself at a small, kinda hidden bar that specialized in pizza and cocktails. Upon asking the bartender to just make me something good, he pulled out a plastic 2L bottle with a little yeast cake at the bottom. It was house-made ginger ale, and he made me a Moscow Mule that was faaaaaaantastic. It was the freshest ginger aroma I'd ever had. I've been thinking about it since.

The other day I bought a hand of ginger and four limes. I got about 1.5C of brown sugar and added a couple cups of water and brought it to a boil. Once the syrup came up to temperature, I threw in the hand of ginger, diced small - it ended up being close to 1.5C of small dice ginger - took it off the heat, put a lid on it, and steeped the ginger in the syrup for somewhere north of an hour. After that, I put some cold water in a 2L bottle and poured the steeping liquid through a colander into the 2L. Then I juiced the four limes and then topped it off with cold water. I stuck it in the freezer to get down to room temperature, then added about 1/2 teaspoon of montrachet yeast and left it on the counter.

24 hours later, the 2L was rock hard to the touch, so I put it in the fridge to crash. 24 hours after that, I tried some. It was super spicy and super fresh-tasting. It was also a little undercarbed, to my surprise. After the first 24 hours of fermentation, not only was the 2L swollen with CO2, I went to open it just to get a taste and it immediately started spewing everywhere. I guess the temperature drop really absorbed a lot of that CO2. Finally, it could have used more lime juice. I ended up adding some of the lime-juice-in-a-plastic-lime to it, and left it back out on the counter overnight to carb up a little more.

If - when! - I make another batch, I think I'll cut the ginger some and up the lime to maybe six limes. It's easy to make and reminded me a little bit of the one time I made apple wine in the simplicity of it. I'm also not sure I needed that much yeast to just carbonate it, but also it's not simple to measure less than an amount like 1/2 teaspoon. The montrachet isn't a hard flocc'er but it's the dry yeast I had on hand; I kind of think about what it'd look like if I'd had some WY1968 around to use.

Anyways, a little change from beer to a cocktail and it brings me back to that great little bar out in Key West.

gumballhead and zombie dust FTW!

Gents, long time no post in here. Homebrew related, so I came here and not the connoisseur thread. A little while back I was asked to be a yeast strain beta tester for the new yeas lab call The Yeast Bay, Ive been loving some of their strains. Thought you guys might want to see what we are up to with the testing. Let me know what you think.

http://riverwards.blogspot.com/2014/...le-quatre.html

Just spent about an hour going through your blog, nice work.

Just for fun, and I've had a couple, here's a non-scientific, biased pic of my favorite beers I can get here in Guam.

Can't forget my latte stone glass:

Thanks!

I built a raised bed in my backyard, and a big part of why I did so was so I could then build a pergola above it for hops to grown on.

Before:



After:



Hops!

Damn that looks sick. Thats going to look awesome all summer covered in bines. Cheers!

Any recommendations on breweries or bars to visit in Seattle? I'll be up there for a few days in late August.

beat: stout all over my ceiling

Hey guys, really interested in getting into homebrewing but really do not know much of anything about it. Best way to start to just buy a kit from Austin Home Brew and go from there?

I started brewing about a year ago from the same spot you're in now, so I can tell you what I did and let the pros itt offer their experience to round out whatever I miss.

Something like this would give you a great start. That kit doesn't include a kettle to cook the beer or bottles, so you'd need to get those separately.

I paid $100 to a guy from craigslist who was selling his grandfather's equipment or something and it came with everything listed in the midwest kit as well as some other cool equipment like a brand new wort chiller, a few cases of bottles, a carboy handle, etc. Might be a good move to keep your eye on craigslist around you for some good deals.

Thanks a lot, any books I should read or just start trying it out?

Others will be able to answer this better than I can, but this book came with the craigslist stuff and provided a huge boost in my general knowledge. Fun, easy to read, goes from very basic to somewhat advanced.

TBH the recipe kits at Northern Brewer or Midwest Brewing Supplies are pretty simple to follow assuming you can manage the heat of your kettle and follow directions. The book will give you insight into how and why all the different steps work, but most of the recipes are designed for beginners without much more equipment than you see listed in that kit.

Obviously if you're hoping to jump right into all grain brewing or building your own recipes or anything more advanced, you'll need a lot more preparation. If you're eager to get a 5-gallon batch ready, make sure you're familiar with the basic equipment and the ingredients, then read some of the recipes (here's one for example) to get an idea of the process.

Tim,

In general, the big online homebrew stores like morebeer, northernbrewer, etc, will offer beginner kits that are at worst break-even and sometimes better deals than buying the stuff separately, so just find a kit you like and get it with few worries about being ripped off. Sometimes good local homebrew shops will match the online offers, but since we don't know where you are we can't offer advice on that. The kits generally have all you need and aren't too expensive, so it's a small risk if you don't like it, and if you end up making it a hobby, most of the stuff that comes in the kit you'll be able to use as long as you homebrew.

Once you get equipment and ingredients, my advice basically comes down to: it's more or less making soup, and brew a second batch within two weeks of your first. The actual brew day for an extract brewer is basically bring water to boil, add ingredient, wait, add ingredient, wait, cold boiling liquid down, add ingredient. Yes, there are details, and yes, you want to be as clean and sanitary as possible, but people were doing this thousands of years ago, so you will likely be ok also. So do the best you can, but don't sweat it or get too stressed. I think it's almost universally recognized that newbies stress way too much pre-brew and during brew day, and once the beer is in the fermentor, newbies exclaim it's much easier than feared. That goes for all-grain as well, by the way.

Unless you really are sure you won't enjoy homebrewing, get another batch going a couple weeks after your first. It'll give you a better feel for the hobby, because you'll be more relaxed and more experienced, and if you wait until your first batch is ready to drink, you'll likely be out of beer before your second is ready, as well as a little rusty. The equipment is a sunk cost after the first batch, so spend the marginal cost for ingredients for a second and leverage your initial investment. If it's not for you, you can still bail after two batches but for a fraction of the overall cost of doing just one.

As for resources, Palmer's How To Brew is the bible and an old version is available online for free. Without hesitation I recommend just buying the latest print version, but for those unsure if they want to brew, the online version is great for your first few batches.

I'm long into a career brewing and I still reference my print copy.

Surprisingly good offering from Dogfish Head. Wasabi-flavored IPA sounds terrible, but somehow it works.

Has anyone brewed using tea? Would you recommend a late addition or should I mash with it?

Interested in making something like the Dogfish Head Ginger Peach Wheat if anyone has some advice

Well. Maybe there isn't any interest, but I brewed 50 bags of this stuff in 2 and a half gallons of water today and have it chilling in the fridge. Tried to keep the temperature at around 150 to avoid tannins. Extremely fragrant with peach, so it'll be interesting to see if that carries through to the beer.

Tomorrow I'll brew a bavarian hefeweizen and add the tea to the primary with the cooled wort.

Judging by the color of the tea, this might be the ugliest beer ever.

Fermented with earl grey like 5 years ago. I didn't like it, but my brewing partner and just about everyone else raved about it. There's far more tea brewing info these days though, look around.

Let us know how it turns out/what you learned too please!

I doubt I'd win any awards from you pros, but the gal who requested that I make a peach beer loved it, so it's a pretty clear success as far as I'm concerned. Color-wise it looks just like a werther's original, which is to say it's a pretty ugly glass of beer.

I was a little concerned that the tea flavor would conflict with the banana and clove flavors of the hefeweizen, but I think the Republic of Tea I used would overpower just about any subtle beer flavor. It really is like an alcoholic, carbonated, wheaty glass of iced tea, which is not bad, but definitely needs refinement.

5% abv and 20 ibu; the peach fragrance remained excellent. Wish I had brewed it about 4 months earlier. Gonna brainstorm some ways to improve it next year, but will likely give it another go for the summer months.

Remember when everyone thought WLP644 was a Brett strain? Those were good times.

What's everyone's favorite quad?

I've been buying a bunch lately and St. Bernardus 12 has been my favorite.

I'm still a few short of having a full sample, but in the last two weeks I've had Rochefort 10, Westy, La Trappe, River North's Quandry and Avery's Reverand (the latter two are cheap enough near me that I might just buy them regularly when I want this style). Elevation (another Colorado brewery) had a really interesting one too, called Apis IV.

I have a list of a few more to try still though. De Struise, Boulevard, Firestone Walker, Victory, Broewerij De Landstheer, Lost Abbey, Weyerbacher and Ommegang all have ones that I've mostly had, but haven't enjoyed in awhile and I want to see how they stack up.